Re: To lay a ghost to rest

: The New York Times recently included the phrase "President George W. Bush has put to rest all the ghosts of his father's one-term administration". This's probably a corruption of the expression "to lay a ghost to rest". Can someone offer it's true definition and suggest it's origin?

I haven't found anything specific yet. But I'm sure somebody somewhere has done a paper on the use of ghosts in literature. As in the ghost of Hamlet's father and the ghosts in "The Christmas Carol."